Too busy ... time for professional learning is seldom built into English language teachers’ job descriptions. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Opinion

Ask a teacher of English as a foreign or second language: "What is the main source of your professional teaching knowledge?" and the answer you are most likely to get is: "Reflection on classroom experience."

If you ask academic experts on ELT, they are more likely to say: "The research."

This is of course an overgeneralisation, but I think it represents a genuine dichotomy, and raises the question: what is the place of research-based theory in the knowledge base underlying ELT?

I was an English teacher for 30 years, and also have experience in university-based teaching of language methodology and pedagogy, so I can relate to both points of view. But the bottom line has to be that for the ELT practitioner the main source of professional learning is classroom experience, enriched by discussion with colleagues, feedback from students, and – for those teachers with the time and inclination – input through reading, conferences and courses, of which research is one important component. Research is not the primary basis of ELT knowledge for the practitioner, but it is a valuable supplement.

Most English teachers, however, do not go to conferences or courses; still fewer take time to read research. This is mainly due to lack of time.

Preparing and teaching lessons usually takes up all their working hours, often more. And time for professional learning is not built into the job description. As one teacher told me, employers often convey the message that they would rather their teachers did not "waste their time" on conferences and reading when they could be in the classroom.

It can also be difficult to access and select relevant literature. Moreover, research articles can often be presented in an opaque style and it is not always obvious how they are relevant to classroom practice.

But if these problems can be overcome, teachers can gain some valuable knowledge from such articles.

This may be in the form of underlying theory that can explain or predict common classroom phenomena. For example, the extensive research on error correction can tell us why learners often do not seem to perceive and implement corrective feedback on their mistakes, and suggest why some kinds of correction are likely to be more effective than others.

Or it may derive from a surprising finding that leads to salutary rethinking, for example, when the research shows that some popular practices are in fact probably not very efficient. The use of "inferencing" (guessing from context) as a means of accessing the meaning of new words is one example.

The research does, however, need to be read selectively and critically, for various reasons.

Research relevant to ELT relates almost exclusively to language acquisition. It only very rarely deals with pedagogical issues such as classroom management and discipline, homework, teaching heterogeneous classes, using the coursebook, exams and so on. Yet it is these issues that determine teachers' decisions on procedures and materials, far more than empirically demonstrated methods of facilitating language learning in controlled conditions.

Moreover, many studies are not directly relevant to a specific teaching context. Schoolteachers like myself, for example, find that most classroom studies are based on groups of young, academic adults (these being most easily accessible for university-based researchers) and their conclusions may not be easily applicable to my classes of unruly teenagers. The topics on which studies are published are selected for reasons that serve the interests of the researcher, and that have nothing to do with their usefulness to the practitioner. So they tend to be ones that are readily "researchable" and likely to provide a basis for articles that will be accepted in refereed journals, such as aspects of assessment.

Topics that are difficult to research, though possibly more valuable for the teacher, tend to be neglected: the interest-value of specific types of exercises, for example.

Finally, researchers are not practitioners. Many have very limited or nonexistent teaching experience so their ideas on the pedagogical implications of their results may not be very practical and need to be treated with caution.

Nevertheless, any practitioner who wishes to develop expertise – to improve teaching or to move into areas such as teacher-training or materials-writing – will find that personal professional experience is never enough, even when enriched with discussion with colleagues and reading of handbooks and practical journals. The research gives access to additional ideas and information that the teacher will then need to assess critically in order to draw appropriate conclusions for their classroom practice.

There remains the problem of teachers' unwillingness or inability to read the research regularly. The availability of much of the research material on the internet, at the click of a mouse, now saves a lot of time and expense. But the basic problem of heavy work schedules remains.

Most teachers will be unable to enjoy the benefits of learning from the research until and unless their job descriptions include the provision of time and funding to attend conferences and study professional literature.

Penny Ur has 30 years' experience as an English teacher in primary and secondary schools in Israel, and was head of the MEd programme in foreign-language teaching at Oranim Academic College of Education, a teacher training college in northern Israel